Second World War
In May–June 1940, several months after the Second World War began, McCreery was involved in the Battle of France, towards the end of which he commanded the 2nd Armoured Brigade, of the 1st Armoured Division, which found itself fighting alongside French General Charles de Gaulle. McCreery was impressed by de Gaulle's bearing during the latter's direction of a counter-attack at Abbeville, and remained an admirer of the French general in later years.
McCreery remained in command of the brigade in the United Kingdom until mid-December when, at the relatively young age of forty-two, he was promoted to the acting rank of major-general and was made general officer commanding (GOC) of the 8th Armoured Division. The division, created only the month before, was one of several created in the aftermath of Dunkirk although, as with most of the rest of the army, the equipment situation was still severe. This, however, was not enough to deter McCreery, who threw himself into his new role with his typical enthusiasm and was determined to train his new division up to the very highest standards. He evidently succeeded in this task, being described as the first British commander "to appreciate and demonstrate the power of an armoured division employed on the ground in defence." He received further recognition from both the press and his superior officers in October 1941 when the army conducted large-scale manoeuvres, where McCreery's division was able to prove what it learned in the last few months. General Sir Alan Brooke, then the Commander-in-Chief, Home Forces (and soon to be Chief of the Imperial General Staff), was among those who praised McCreery and saw much promise in him, writing in his diary that the division was "going on well under Dick McCreery."
McCreery was an expert on the use of light armoured vehicles (such vehicles being the mechanised equivalent of the cavalry of which his regiment had been part). His next posting overseas during the Second World War was as Adviser, Armoured Fighting Vehicles, Middle East (March to August 1942), where he was Claude Auchinleck's chief adviser on such matters. There followed spells working for General Sir Harold Alexander first as Chief of General Staff, Middle East Command in Cairo and then Chief of General Staff, 18th Army Group during the Tunisian campaign (1942–43). At Middle East Command Alexander was Montgomery's superior at the time of the Second Battle of El Alamein, in October 1942, and McCreery had a role in the planning of that battle, in which armoured vehicles played such a significant part.
McCreery remained at Alexander's side when the latter was made commander of the 18th Army Group in mid-February 1943. This brought McCreery into contact for the first time with the Americans, who had entered the war fourteen months earlier. As he had at El Alamein, McCreery continued to play an important role and, as the Allied campaign in Tunisia was drawing to a close in the next few weeks, he pressed Alexander to switch some of the divisions from Montgomery's Eighth Army to Anderson's First Army as, by now, it was evident that Montgomery's attacks had stalled at Enfidaville. Montgomery eventually agreed to the idea and the Axis forces in North Africa finally surrendered on 13 May, with some 238,000 of them being taken prisoner by the Allies. Brooke, the CIGS, believed McCreery never received the credit he deserved in the ultimately triumphant campaign. McCreery himself, always modest, wrote simply to his wife, "This time, anyway, I feel that I have had some small hand in this success."
McCreery was given command of VIII Corps in the United Kingdom in July 1943 and then, following the Axis surrender in Tunisia, he was given command of X Corps in August 1943 which was training to take part in the Italian campaign. X Corps, now under command of the US Fifth Army under Mark W. Clark, played a key role at the bitterly contested Salerno landings, in September 1943, then fought its way, reaching the River Garigliano at the end of 1943 to be halted in front of the Winter Line and were involved in the first Battle of Monte Cassino in January 1944 and later the capture of Rome on 4 June 1944. In September 1943, McCreery was responsible for dealing with the Salerno mutiny.
McCreery was knighted in the field in July 1944 by King George VI, at Palazzo del Pero, near Arezzo, Italy.
McCreery took over command of the Eighth Army from Lieutenant General Oliver Leese on 1 October 1944. The 1945 spring offensive which followed, conducted jointly by the Eighth Army and the Fifth Army, now commanded by Lucian K. Truscott, another cavalryman, culminated in a 23-day battle which resulted in the surrender of nearly a million German soldiers.
The achievements of the Eighth Army in this last campaign are perhaps less well remembered than those during the Western Desert Campaign under Montgomery. This is because they were overshadowed by the contemporaneous campaign in Northern France following the Normandy landings in June 1944 which was the main focus of public attention at the time, and has similarly attracted more attention from subsequent historians.
Doherty sums up this, the final campaign of the Eighth Army as follows: ‘Sir Richard McCreery had managed one of the finest performances of a British army in the course of the war. He had done so through attention to detail, careful planning and a strategic flair that had few superiors.’
McCreery was the last commander of the British Eighth Army; in 1945 it was re-constituted as British Troops Austria. He was also the only cavalryman to command it. He was appointed a Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire in July 1945.
